A foremost journalist, publisher and politician, Charles Prestwich Scott, or C.P. Scott as he’s more commonly known, was born the son of Russell Scott, a successful businessman, on October 26, 1846 in Bath but would make his name up north.

An alumnus of Corpus Christi, Oxford, graduating in 1869, Scott would become one of this country’s greatest of modern newspaper editors. He was just 26 when he became editor of ‘The Manchester Guardian’ in 1872 (‘The Guardian’ since 1959), which he nurtured into a seriously progressive Liberal rival of the more Conservative ‘The Times’. He married in 1874 to Rachel Cook and would be father to three sons and a daughter.

Scott’s editorial approach was often controversial and very independent but it worked. He supported Irish Home Rule in the 1880s despite a majority being firmly against, also opposed the 2nd Boer War (1899-1902), which certainly would have made his paper stand out at a time when wars of empire were unquestionably popular, and also ensured that internationalist and pacifist sentiments at least got an airing during World War One. His literary standards were extremely high; the paper would therefore have been worth reading. Unlike some papers today he believed in dutifully presenting the news honestly and fairly, remarking that ‘comment is free, but the facts are sacred’. As editor he’d attract some literary luminaries to the paper’s journalists including our second longest-serving Poet Laureate, John Masefield, economist John Maynard Keynes and historian Arnold Toynbee.

Scott became a Liberal MP (1895-1906), then became owner of The Manchester Guardian in 1905 (some sources suggest 1907) when he bought the paper on the death of its previous publisher, J.E. Taylor, who just happened to be his cousin. He was succeeded as editor of the newspaper in 1929, after getting on for 60 years, by his own son, fellow journo/editor Edward Taylor (1883-1932), who tragically drowned in Lake Windermere in the same year that his father died, just a few months later in fact on April 22.

C.P. Scott had already died on New Year’s Day, 1932, in Manchester. He was aged 85. At least he was spared the knowledge of his son’s sailing calamity aged just 48. He was also the grandfather of Evelyn Montague (1900-48), another journalist, but also an athlete who competed at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the Steeplechase. He was depicted in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire.